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> Gratio: Go outside.

Gratio steps outside, standing on the porch of his oblong-ish hive, looking out at the field of tall grass in front of him. He glances up into the sky.

He freezes in place, twitching slightly.

HIVEBENT. It's sort of a social convention to not comment on the red, pixelated word that hovers out in space near the green moon. You don't mind that, because frankly those conversations would get very old, very fast. It feels like the name to a story that isn't yours — one that you're adjacent to, maybe, but never a part of.

EVENT:OPENING SPEECH — a narration of wistful poetics about struggle, dubiously correct quotations, and pithy statements — cannot be performed by you, because you are not ROLE:VIEWPOINT. ROLE:VIEWPOINT was assigned to CODENAME:COUNTER-CONSPIRATORIAL, who has declined to make an appearance, when she jumpstarted this arc. And yet you have triggered the preconditions for EVENT:OPENING SPEECH, causing REGIFACTION to freeze up.

The precariousness of this situation entirely escapes you, because the truth is not served solely by revelation, but by ignorance — and for now, you must remain ignorant of the rules that govern your reality. Also you're kind of frozen.

Still, we have to get out of this pickle one way or another. Someone who's more adept at bending the rules could probably do it.